Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 2810) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2018 for military activities of the Department of Defense and for military construction, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes, and providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 23) to provide drought relief in the State of California, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule for providing debate on the National Defense Authorization Act, often called the NDAA, and also the

Gaining Responsibility on Water Act. First let me address that act.

They tried to create an acronym called the GROW Act, Gaining Responsibility on Water, trying to make it seem like it actually might help things grow, when it actually picks winners and losers in water-- and the losers are the environment, the State of California, and many others.

There are also a lot of problems around the process for the GROW Act. It bypassed hearings and markups. In fact, up until this bill was published on the Rules Committee website, only lobbyists and a few Republicans even knew what many of the provisions in this bill were. This kind of backroom dealmaking is one of the reasons the general public holds Congress in such low esteem.

There is an immense amount of opposition to this legislation, including from conservation groups, fishing groups, Native American Tribes, and the State of California.

Mr. Speaker, I have several letters that I include in the Record in regard to opposition to H.R. 23. One of the letters is signed by groups ranging from the American Bird Conservancy to the Animal Welfare Institute, to the Humane Society and a number of others, discussing how this bill would dramatically weaken protections for salmon, birds, and other fish and wildlife.

Another letter that I include in the Record is from a former colleague of ours, now the attorney general of the State of California, Xavier Becerra, and, finally, a letter from the Governor of California as well.

Please Oppose H.R. 23

July 11, 2017.

Dear Representative: On behalf of the undersigned

organizations, we write to urge you to oppose H.R. 23

(Valadao, R-CA). This bill would dramatically weaken

protections for salmon, migratory birds, and other fish and

wildlife in California's Bay-Delta watershed and would

threaten thousands of fishing jobs in California and Oregon

that depend on the health of these species. In addition to

gutting critical federal environmental protections in

California, H.R. 23 also preempts a wide range of state

environmental laws and would prevent the State of California

from protecting and managing its own water and wildlife

resources. In addition to these provisions focused on

California, the bill also includes titles that would reduce

public and environmental reviews of new dams and water

infrastructure across the Western states. Both the Obama

Administration and the State of California opposed similar

legislation in recent years, including opposition to H.R.

3964 (Valadao, R-CA) and H.R. 5781 (Valadao, R-CA) in 2014,

and H.R. 2898 (Valadao, R-CA) in 2015.

California has just emerged from a devastating drought, and

the state is taking proactive steps to protect cities, farms,

and the environment from future dry spells. However, several

provisions in H.R. 23 would undermine California's efforts by

permanently preempting critical state laws that protect

salmon and other native fisheries and the jobs they support.

In addition, this legislation would effectively repeal and

preempt state and federal laws and a binding settlement

agreement that require restoration of the San Joaquin River

and its native salmon runs, instead permanently drying up 60

miles of California's second longest river. H.R. 23 not only

preempts state law as applied to federal water projects in

California, but it also preempts the application of state

laws to the State Water Project and virtually all water

rights holders in California's Bay-Delta watershed. This

extensive preemption of state law in H.R. 23 is contrary to

over a hundred years of Reclamation law and would set a

dangerous precedent for other Western states.

H.R. 23 would also override the Endangered Species Act,

increasing the risk that winter-run Chinook salmon and other

native fish species are driven extinct. Further, H.R. 23

could devastate wildlife refuges that provide habitat for

millions of birds that migrate along the Pacific Flyway by

undermining the refuges' water rights and threatening

critically important funding sources. H.R. 23 would also

eviscerate the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act,

eliminating instream flows to benefit salmon and funding for

habitat restoration projects, which help to mitigate the

adverse effects of the Central Valley Project. The impacts

from these provisions would reverberate along the entire West

Coast, affecting fishing jobs and related industries in

Oregon and Washington that depend on salmon from California's

Central Valley and threatening populations of waterfowl and

shorebirds that migrate to and from Alaska and Canada each

year.

In addition to these provisions focused on gutting

environmental protections in California, H.R. 23 also

includes several titles that would weaken the public's right

to know and environmental protection across the western

United States. For instance, the bill's dam permitting

provisions would give the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

unprecedented control over the environmental review process

and could undermine the ability of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Service and N.O.A.A. Fisheries to share expertise and inform

the development of major infrastructure investments. These

provisions would make it difficult, if not impossible, for

responsible agencies to meaningfully analyze proposed

projects and could limit the public's ability to weigh in on

infrastructure that could affect communities for decades.

H.R. 23 has not been the subject of a single committee

hearing to receive public input from the State of California,

hunting organizations, sport and commercial fishermen,

tribes, or conservation groups, even though the bill could

greatly interfere with state water rights and cripple the

ability of state and federal agencies to manage limited water

resources for all beneficial uses. Last year Congress passed

legislation addressing California's water operations in the

Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016

(P.L. 114-322). H.R. 23 would undermine that legislation,

which supporters claim requires that state and federal water

projects are operated in compliance with state law and the

Endangered Species Act.

H.R. 23 also threatens thousands of fishing jobs in

California, Oregon, and beyond that depend on healthy salmon

runs from the Bay-Delta. The closure of the salmon fishery in

2008 and 2009 resulted in thousands of lost jobs in these

states. The livelihoods and recreational interests of salmon

fishermen, Delta farmers, fishing guides, tackle shops, bird

watchers, waterfowl hunters, and communities across

California and along the West Coast depend on the

environmental protections that H.R. 23 would eliminate.

For these reasons, we respectfully urge you to oppose H.R.

23. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

American Bird Conservancy,

American Rivers,

Animal Welfare Institute,

Audubon California,

Center for Biological Diversity,

Center for Food Safety,

Defenders of Wildlife,

Earthjustice,

Endangered Species Coalition,

Environmental Protection Information Center,

Friends of the River,

Humane Society Legislative Fund,

International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island

Institute,

Klamath Forest Alliance,

League of Conservation Voters,

Natural Resources Defense Council,

San Juan Citizens Alliance,

Sierra Club,

The Bay Institute,

Turtle Island Restoration Network,

Western Nebraska Resources Council,

Western Watersheds Project,

WildEarth Guardians.

Mr. Speaker, the only winners under this bill are actually a few large agricultural producers who will take all the water, leaving none for many others. This bill is a water grab, plain and simple. The so-called GROW Act provides no new water, but it takes the existing water and gives it to those with the best lobbyists here in Washington.

Instead of this highly partisan bill, we should be taking steps to actually grow the water supply for everybody, with water recycling, with water conservation, water efficiency, many other nonideological, nonpartisan fixes, water infrastructure that can actually help deliver water to small farmers, protect our environment, and, yes, our legitimate agricultural producers as well.

Unfortunately, instead, we are stuck with this so-called GROW Act, which jeopardizes fishing jobs, preempts State conservation laws, overrides the Endangered Species Act for salmon and wildlife, weakens critical safeguards under the NEPA process, and undermines water rights. In doing so, this bill would permanently destroy California's rivers, Bay-Delta Estuary, needed fisheries, and the thousands of jobs that depend on those natural resources.

This bill is not a balanced protection. It picks winners and losers and hands over water rights to those who are present for the backroom deals in Washington.

Let's go back to the drawing board. I come from the State of Colorado, and we know how important water is. Let's find a way to find a bipartisan path to grow the water supply across the Western United States.

Let me address the other bill that is contained in this rule, the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act. For 56 straight years, the United States Congress has come together to craft policies and recommendations for the United States Armed Forces and to put those policies into law under the authorizing statute for our military. Without question, this bill is one of the most consequential and important items that Congress undertakes each year.

Personally, I have found objections to policies, and I have been a fan of other policies contained in these bills while I have been in Congress. And I want to commend the work of my colleagues, Democratic and Republican, who serve on the Armed Services Committee for their important work on this legislation so important for our national security.

Many of my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee have served or do serve in our military. Members of the committee are dedicated public servants, they are experts in their field, they travel and learn and hear from experts, and they set aside many of their political differences to do what it takes to keep America safe and secure, something that Republicans, Democrats, Independents are all committed to. We need to make sure that we give our military the tools they need to safely carry out the tasks that the Commander in Chief and elected officials ask them to undertake.

I commend the committee for putting forth a bill that takes constructive steps in filling military readiness gaps, requiring strategies from the administration and the Department of Defense with regard to contingencies in several countries, and acknowledging and planning for the real climate change threat that is posed to our national security.

Yet the work of the NDAA is not limited to members of the Armed Services Committee. The Members of this body as a whole, Democrats and Republicans who don't serve on that committee, have submitted over 400 amendments to do what each one of us believes would, in some way, improve this bill and strengthen our national security.

But the work of NDAA continues, and before this week is over, I expect to see the Rules Committee make in order an even greater number of these amendments. We took the first step in this rule by making a few dozen amendments in order, and we will continue that work in Rules Committee this afternoon as we thoughtfully go

through the 400 amendments so a representative number of those from my Democratic and Republican colleagues who don't have the opportunity to serve on the Armed Services Committee can present those ideas for consideration by the full House.

But for all the hard work that the Armed Services Committee has done, what we have before us this week is essentially an argument that needs to be solved by the Budget Committee and can't, frankly, be solved by the authorizing committee.

What we are doing is we are having a very strange debate in this body. We are having effectively a budget debate within the defense bill. We are discussing authorization levels, when we know that the real discussion and battle over tradeoffs will be around the funding levels, not so much the authorization levels.

One of the tricks that we worry about is by blatantly disregarding the proper use of the overseas contingency fund and by deliberately flouting limitations set by the Budget Control Act, this Armed Services authorization bill has been completely overtaken by the debate on the Federal budget.

So this week we see a debate about the inability to pass a budget, adhere to a budget, and balance our budget, and, rather, we are operating kind of in this lala world of, if we had all the money in the world, here is what we would do, but as my Democratic and Republican friends know, we live in a world of tradeoffs, and we as Democrats and Republicans will need to decide what those tradeoffs are. That is not being done in this bill, and, in fact, it is one week less that we have to have those important discussions about how to actually secure America and protect our country.

If the debate over armed services wasn't such a serious topic, I would, frankly, give the Republicans kudos for building such an elaborate and complex budget scheme. It is very clever, more so than the traditional overseas contingency gimmicks that have been presented within recent years. It took me a little while to even understand what this budget gimmick was, and I am going to now seek to explain it.

The Defense spending budget is capped at $549 billion by the Budget Control Act of 2011. $549 billion is the maximum that would be spent on defense. This bill authorizes $621 billion as its discretionary base budget authority. That means that the bill we are debating today goes $70 billion in spending above the spending caps that Congress agreed on. That is all deficit spending. That means Congress will increase the deficit by $70 billion under this bill, but it gets worse.

The United States has been embroiled in conflict abroad since 2001, and many administrations, Democratic and Republican, have requested another pot of money that we call the overseas contingency fund. These funds, as the name indicates, are supposed to be used for paying costs that are incurred due to U.S. engagement in contingency operations, not baseline operations. And they are exempt, rightfully so, from the budget caps, because we never wanted to constrain our ability to provide funding for an unforeseen contingency situation that becomes a necessity for our national security.

This year, however, the bill provides for $74 billion for this overseas contingency fund, a full $10 billion above what was even requested by the President.

Now, a reminder, the Republicans haven't actually produced a budget this year, so we can't exactly make a comparison between the President's budget and the Republican majority's budget. I think one of the reasons they might be afraid to is they will show substantially increased deficits with these tax-and-spend Republican policies that have come to typify the Republican approach to grow our government with every new spending bill.

What the NDAA does is it takes this overseas contingency account, which is often called the slush fund for the Pentagon, it adds $10 billion to that fund, but instead of paying for future contingencies, that will pay for baseline operations. Some of that $10 billion goes to the unfunded priorities of the Pentagon, things it couldn't quite fit in the $621 billion, which already increases Federal spending by $70 billion.

So it is just throwing money, Federal money, your taxpayer money, Mr. Speaker, hand-over-fist, without a plan, indebting future generations for spending money today. The Pentagon gets more big ticket items they want.

And, likewise, it is hard to argue with funds being allocated to operations and maintenance. We are all for maintenance, we are all for readiness, but we are all for understanding the tradeoffs that we have. We cannot simply continue to spend irresponsibly, indebting future generations.

At some level, Mr. Speaker, and I think this kind of throwing additional money well above and beyond the budget caps reaches that level, we make our Nation less secure rather than more secure by making us economically beholden to foreign nations and indebting future generations of Americans.

Congress has set limits on how much we can spend on defense versus nondefense. So when we run out of money under this NDAA plan, either we are going to be forced to spend more, which is what you and I can predict what will happen, of course that is what is going to happen, or they are somehow going to find the money elsewhere, which I can pretty much assure you, Mr. Speaker, is not going to happen. That is a prediction that I am giving you.

And not having seen a budget, by the way, this is, we think, why Republicans haven't come up with a budget, because they know they can't make enough devastating cuts to possibly pay for this military increase, and they certainly don't want to put their name to paper on those cuts. And we all know what is going to happen. They won't make those cuts, spending will go up, debt will go up. I mean, that is what we know will happen. We have been here before, seen that movie.

Now, again, theoretically, Draconian cuts can be made to schools and Head Start and NASA and medical research, money fighting the opioid epidemic, homeland security, police. Yeah, theoretically they can devastate everything inside of our country, leaving a hollowed-out core, a well protected hollowed-out core, but I know Republicans aren't cruel enough to do that. Instead, they are going to kick the can down the road and indebt future generations and make our country less secure by borrowing money from China and Saudi Arabia to fund today's military, making us economically beholden to the very foreign powers that represent a real geopolitical threat to American interests.

That is why budgets matter, that is why these budget gimmicks that are being used through the overseas contingency fund matter, and that is why we need to have a budget debate, not a fake budget debate in the context of a national defense debate, which is what is being done here today.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), a distinguished member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, in April, President Trump and congressional Republicans rolled back the FCC's rule to protect Americans' personal information and their internet browsing history. By doing so, they effectively sold personal privacy to the highest corporate bidder.

Today is Net Neutrality Day of Action, protesting the FCC's proposal to end equal access to online content, which would destroy the internet as we know it. What better day to also protect the future of our privacy by undoing the Republicans' reckless rollback that placed cable profits above our privacy and consumer protections.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative Rosen's Restoring American Privacy Act, H.R. 1868. This bill will restore Americans' privacy protections and tell internet service providers they can't sell their customers' personal information without the knowledge and consent of the customers.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, to discuss our proposal, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Rosen).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Vermont.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This bill has several other policies I want to address. For one, it ties our participation in the critical New START with Russia to a separate Europe-focused treaty that Russia is not in compliance with.

The New START is a nuclear arms reduction treaty between our Nation and Russia, and we should not remove ourselves from that, from an agreement that allows us to inspect and gather information about Russia's nuclear facilities.

In addition, this rule, if adopted, would fail to extend the Special Survivor Indemnity Allowance, causing it to expire in May of 2018. The Special Survivor Indemnity Allowance is a program that was originally created in the NDAA, and goes a long way to helping to mitigate the problems that recipients of the Defense Department's Survivor Benefit Plan face.

There are other provisions of this bill which I object to in their current form but are going to be debated through amendments very likely over the course of the next week. For instance, the bill currently prevents the transfer of any detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. This detention facility that is extralegal should be closed, not repopulated, and we certainly will have that debate this week.

This bill, unfortunately, also authorizes far too many funds and continues to overfund our nuclear weapons activities, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, in fact, as much as $1 trillion over the next 30 years, for a stockpile of weapons that, even if substantially cut, would be enough to end life on the planet.

I testified before the Appropriations Subcommittee with regard to this matter and argued how can we possibly go before the taxpayers back home and say we need to overfund our nuclear arsenal to destroy the world seven times instead of five, or five times instead of three.

One would think that ending life on the planet once would be more than enough, and it is hard to argue from taxpayers that they should, in fact, pay for this planet's destruction multiple times.

We also continue to use force in our ongoing operations in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. I join my colleagues from the other side of the aisle in calling for an updated Authorization for Use of Military Force. To date, Congress has taken zero meaningful actions toward achieving that, yet we hear on this floor regularly from my friend from Alabama and others that Republicans and Democrats need to do that, especially before we put another soldier in harm's way.

That is the role of this body, and it is time to stop avoiding the task of writing an Authorization for Use of Military Force. Have that debate and make it happen.

These are the types of questions we should be debating, but instead we are continuing to avoid those and plunging our Nation deeper into debt without a real budget plan.

Instead of focusing on real questions about how to improve our defense, the general debate on this bill will largely focus on budget tricks. This debate on this budget should happen on the floor, in the Budget Committee, in a budget passed by this body.

One of the amendments I offered with my colleague, Ms. Lee, that we will be debating, would cut 1 percent of the money authorized in that bill. That would help. It would be a starting point. It would still be a spending level above the budget caps, but at least 1 percent in the record, reckless deficits from this Republican spending bill.

At some point we have to make decisions about tradeoffs, about the directions of our budgets, our entitlements, our discretionary, our revenues, our defense, and our nondefense. We can't resign ourselves to plunging future generations into further debt.

My amendment with Ms. Lee is a small, first step taking a stand against unsustainable budget levels that make our Nation less secure rather than more secure. It is the wrong way to do things. It is the wrong time to have this debate. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule so we can go back to the starting board and discuss the items that my Republican colleagues agree are important in terms of the use of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, ending the budget gimmicks, and figuring out how to balance the budget, rather than plunge our Nation deeper into debt.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, so much for regular order. The bill before us today has not received a hearing in committee where witnesses could have testified about its effects. It has not gone through the markup process so that the committee of jurisdiction could actually debate and offer amendments to improve it.

Moreover, we are about to vote on a bill with several provisions that no one has ever seen before last Wednesday, aside from a small group of Republican offices and special interests that have been working on the bill.

Now, this closed-door process not only ignores the changing conditions of drought in California and how the State has already been adapting to meet water conservation needs, but it also ignores all of California's water provisions that were included, albeit at the last minute, in the WIIN Act last year, which is now Federal law.

There has been no discussion, no hearing, no way to know how the provisions of this bill that overlap with the enacted law will actually be implemented by the Trump administration. This is legislating blind, and it is a bad idea.

On some level, I do understand my Republican colleagues' fear of regular order on this bill. The more sunlight and public scrutiny that this bill gets, the uglier it looks. Make no mistake, if enacted, this bill will hurt a lot of people.

This bill takes water away from fishermen, from tribes, the environment, Delta farmers, and others in order to redistribute it primarily to a small group of some of the Nation's biggest and most politically connected agribusiness interests.

My Republican colleagues often talk about States' rights, yet this bill repeatedly overrides State laws over the objection of that State. I am talking, of course, about California.

A letter of opposition to H.R. 23 recently came from Governor Jerry Brown, sent to the speaker of the house in the California Congressional Delegation attesting to this. Governor Brown writes: ``This bill overrides California water law, ignoring our State's prerogative to oversee our waters. Commandeering our laws for purposes defined in Washington is not right.''

This assault on California law and its values are why both California Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Kamala Harris oppose this bill as well.

Now, here are just a few examples of the sections in this bill that preempt State law. Section 108(d) begins with the words ``California law is preempted'' on page 21, paragraph 3. That section goes on to remove State protections for certain fisheries.

Section 113 of the bill preempts California law that requires the restoration of California's second longest river and that river's native salmon runs.

Section 108 of the bill tells the State of California that it is barred from managing the State's water in any way that would ``protect, enhance, or restore . . . any public trust value.'' In other words, the broader public interest can't be considered by the State when it is managing the water that belongs to the people of California.

Additionally, this bill eliminates existing fishery protections, which could put many of California's native fisheries and the thousands of jobs they support on a path to extinction. That means that this is more than just a California problem, because fishing communities in Oregon and Washington also depend on California salmon runs.

There was a recent UC Davis report that found that if present trends continue, many of California's salmon runs are on a path to extinction in the decades ahead. This bill would hasten that prediction into reality.

This is not just an environmental impact. It is a human one as well. We have heard from fishermen who are struggling to pay their mortgages, boats are being scrapped because owners can't pay mooring fees, homes are being repossessed. We have heard about the struggles of small- business owners running restaurants, hotels, and other retail and service businesses. We have also heard from Indian Country, like the Hoopa Valley Tribe that I represent, and others about the danger that this bill poses to tribal fisheries, to tribal water, fishing, property, and other rights.

Rather than simply picking winners and losers, as this destructive bill does, Congress should be working together to grow water supplies for everyone without violating Tribal responsibilities or overriding State sovereignty. Congress could be supporting a range of modern water technologies like reuse, desalination, water use efficiency, storm water capture, and groundwater storage and remediation. These are the tools that have increased California's water supplies in recent years and are making our State more drought resilient, but this bill does none of that.

These are not controversial suggestions working on these modern water supply tools; in fact, it was the reclamation commissioner for President George W. Bush who described the water that we could tap through reuse as the next great river of the American

West. We should be focusing on those kind of noncontroversial consensus solutions.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We often hear about water that flows through the estuary of California's Bay-Delta system, we hear that sometimes described as wasted. There are some inconvenient facts that we have to bring up when that happens, like the fact that almost all of that water that flows out through the estuary is to prevent salt water intrusion so that the State and Federal water pumps aren't sending salty water to millions of Californians. That wouldn't work. In fact, if we shut down all of that outflow that my colleague just mentioned, that is exactly what you would see: massive salt water intrusion and a shutdown of the State and Federal water projects.

There is also incredible value in the water that flows through that estuary for downstream communities and farmers and senior water right holders, and others who have depended on it for decades. No one understands that better than my colleague who represents some of those communities in the estuary, in the delta, Mike Thompson.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

Mr. Chairman, just to clarify, our environmental laws are not preventing new dams from being built. In fact, the Bureau of Reclamation, the GAO, and the Congressional Research Service have looked at this and haven't been able to identify a single--nor my colleagues across the aisle have been able to identify a single dam project that somehow was blocked because of environmental laws.

What has been stopping many of them--not all, but many of them--has been the financing challenge because many of these projects just don't make a lot of sense. It is important to realize that projects that do make sense have moved forward. They have secured financing. They haven't needed special shortcuts from the environmental laws. And they have happened, projects like Diamond Valley, projects like Los Vaqueros, probably the coming expansion of Los Vaqueros.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).

Mr. Chairman, I want to briefly respond to my friend's reference to a manmade drought.

What California just went through is what hydrologists, scientists, and historians tell us is the most significant drought the State has ever experienced--a natural one. I certainly knew that human activities were impacting the climate, but, wow, if human beings could actually cause the snowpack to be 5 percent of normal and cause a drought like that, that is taking human-induced climate change to a whole new level. We have got to be careful in this debate. We are beginning to give hyperbole a bad name.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi), representing the Sacramento Valley.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Bera), my colleague from the Sacramento area.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Responding briefly to a bit of hyperbole just now that somehow environmental laws have created a ``desert that produces nothing in California,'' we do need to remember the facts.

The truth is, even through this historic drought, farm employment rose statewide each year during the drought. The agricultural economy is thriving, and, thankfully, this year, even the most junior Federal contractors are enjoying a 100 percent allocation. They are fully realizing the vision of being the breadbasket of this country and the world. It is hardly a desert that produces nothing.

With that, I do need to contrast what has been happening on the other end of the system, many of the communities I represent, where fishing communities really do have nothing.

The California salmon season this year will be little or nothing. The Yurok Tribe that I represent that is dependent on fisheries, salmon fisheries in California since long before there was agriculture, will, for the second year in a row, close its Tribal fishery. We are seeing folks selling their boats. We are seeing fishing communities impacted in dramatic ways. There is real genuine hardship, much like what was just described by my friend. So the facts do matter.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this debate is causing the fact checking machines to melt down, unfortunately. We just heard that there hasn't been a single major storage project in California since the 1970s. That is going to come as shocking news to the folks of the Metropolitan Water District which completed a huge storage project, Diamond Valley, during that period. It will certainly surprise the folks in Contra Costa, which completed Los Vaqueros without any special environmental shortcuts and with their own financing for the most part. It will surprise local water districts around the State, including my own Marin Municipal Water District, which completed two dam expansion projects in that same timeframe. It will surprise the folks at the current and semitropic groundwater banks that expanded significantly groundwater storage during that timeframe.

In fact, the truth is, California has added nearly 6 million acre feet of new storage, surface and groundwater storage, over the past few decades in this timeframe we have been talking about. So facts really do matter.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I do appreciate the redefinition of ``major water storage

projects.'' It is not a definition that I think is recognized anywhere else other than just now on this floor, but I appreciate it.

Mr. Chair, there are many problems with this bill, and I do want to urge my colleagues to oppose it. I can't keep track of the number of times the State of California has come up in our debate here these last several minutes. So let's look to the State of California and see what the State of California says about this bill.

The Governor of the State of California opposes it in a hard-hitting letter that went out to the California delegation and others just a few days ago. The new attorney general of California, Xavier Becerra, wrote an equally critical letter opposing this bill. Both U.S. Senators from California oppose this bill.

It is going nowhere in the Senate and will not become law because of fundamental flaws that have been brought up each of the past several years that this bill has been introduced in this Congress.

It overrides California State sovereignty and State water laws in ways that are unacceptable to the people of California and to the government of California. So when we keep bringing up California, let's just be very clear that California doesn't want this bill. California opposes this bill.

Now, I represent the downstream end of some of these water systems that we are talking about. When we talk about people and fish and jobs, it is important to remember that fishing jobs matter, too. In the communities that I represent, and also communities throughout Oregon and Washington that depend on California salmon runs, they are hurting.

This summer we are going to probably see a closure, for all intents and purposes, of the commercial salmon season. We are certainly going to see a closure of the Yurok Tribal Salmon Fishery for the second year in a row. That is not only economically devastating to Tribal communities that I represent, it has an emotional impact as well. These are communities that are hurting. In fact, the Yurok are reporting suicide rates among young people that are alarmingly high. The closure of this sacred fishery that is their grocery store, that is a sacred part of their existence, is certainly not going to help, and I think could very well contribute to the very severe problems that they are experiencing.

Fishing jobs matter, the environment matters, downstream communities that depend on this water that would be redistributed and reallocated by Congress through this short-sighted bill, that all matters, too.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this wrong-headed bill, and I urge my colleagues across the aisle to do what we have been inviting them to do each of the past several years, and that is to reach across the aisle on bipartisan, commonsense water solutions. There is a lot that we could do together. Many of my colleagues served with me in the California State legislature. They know, because we did it together, that there is a different way. There is a better way.

We were able to pass landmark, bipartisan water legislation during our time together in Sacramento, and we did it because we didn't try to pick winners and losers. We found all sorts of low-hanging fruit and consensus solutions, and we came up with something that was supported across party lines, and in every region of the State. We can do that here, too, but we won't do it through this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I also represent northern California. My friend, Mr. LaMalfa, just said that this bill fully protects northern California's water. Well, we represent the two districts right next to each other that are the northernmost districts in California, and I can tell you, my part of northern California doesn't do so well under this bill.

In fact, the only way we have been able to prevent a repeat of a catastrophic fish kill disaster in the Klamath River system each of the last several years has been by releasing cold water in the Trinity River, which is a major tributary to the lower Klamath River. That has been a lifesaver for the communities downstream that depend on those salmon runs. This bill would legislatively prohibit the Bureau of Reclamation from ever doing that again.

So this is not a bill that is good for northern California, certainly, my part of northern California. And I think the same goes for the other northern California colleagues that we heard testify in opposition earlier.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Fresno, California (Mr. Costa).

Mr. Chair, I am prepared to close. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I actually have no problem with my colleague's attempt to make a clarification to this bill. That clarification is needed, I am sure, but it is important to realize that the reason it is needed is because we haven't gone through regular order. We are talking about provisions that have not had the benefit of hearings, of markups, of witness testimony, clarifications that would have been made in the regular order process.

The underlying bill, it is important to remember, does enormous damage to California water law. That is why it is opposed by the Governor, by our attorney general, by our two U.S. Senators, and by many members of the California delegation.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to quickly offer my support for my colleague's amendment. This is a commonsense amendment that recognizes the tremendous potential that groundwater storage represents. This is one of the most important tools in our water management toolbox. We know that our future hydrology will be less certain because of climate change. It is going to make droughts across our country more frequent and severe.

This amendment will help make sure we are taking the appropriate steps to prepare. So I want to thank my colleague for this forward- thinking amendment, and I support its adoption.

Mr. Chairman, I want to express my support for this amendment as well.

The headwaters of our watersheds play a crucial role in ensuring the reliability and the quality of water supplies throughout our State. Our water supply depends not just on artificial reservoirs, but also on natural reservoirs of snowpack and groundwater retention in the forests of these headwater areas.

Healthy, vibrant forests provide multiple benefits, including carbon capture and shade to reduce rapid snowmelt. When they are properly protected, forest soils act like sponges to absorb rainfall and slowly release it back into rivers and streams throughout the year.

This amendment is one of the many ways that we can ensure that the Bureau of Reclamation is building a 21st century water supply system for California and the West, so I strongly encourage support for it.

Mr. Chairman, in defense of the economics of water recycling, I need to correct the record.

The WateReuse Research Foundation has found that recycling projects tend to be among the cheapest ways to increase water supply. Potable water reuse is generally comparable or less expensive than alternative options.

The Congressional Research Service has found that title 16 water recycling projects are comparable in price to alternate water sources-- in some cases, substantially cheaper--and there is vast new potential to develop these water supplies.

This is exactly the kind of forward-thinking conversation we ought to have if we are serious about California water.

Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed.

Mr. Chair, I certainly appreciate that my colleagues are trying to help mitigate a small amount of the harm caused by this bill, but, unfortunately, the underlying bill remains a disaster for Indian Country.

Title 5 of this bill is a direct attack against the existing rights of Tribes in my district. As I have said previously, the salmon in the Klamath River system are the grocery store, the church, the lifeline for the Tribes in my district, and this bill explicitly prevents Federal agencies from making emergency water releases to combat fish disease and prevent massive fish kills that would devastate these Tribal balance fisheries.

That is important to remember, lest we get too carried away with whatever curative effects this amendment might have.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 431 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 431 provides for full consideration, including making six amendments in order to H.R. 23, the Gaining Responsibility on Water Act, and allows us to begin consideration of H.R. 2810, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018.

H.R. 23 is legislation necessary to deal with the severe water supply crisis facing California and other Western States. The region has experienced the worst drought in over 1,000 years, and many Western communities have been very negatively impacted.

This commonsense legislation fixes the broken regulatory system that is only exacerbating the impact of the drought conditions. The current regulatory system is overly complex and inconsistent. Making matters worse, various court decisions have only further complicated efforts to resolve these issues.

For example, this bill will help bring California's water infrastructure into the 21st century. The current water storage and delivery system is designed to serve approximately 22 million people, but the State currently has 37 million residents.

The bill is not only important to people in California. In fact, around half of our Nation's fruits and vegetables come from California. Every American could be hit in the pocketbook at the grocery store or checkout line if the California drought is allowed to continue.

Through this legislation, we can help expand water infrastructure and allow for greater water conveyance while ensuring environmental and water rights protections. Passing H.R. 23 will directly help address the drought crisis and benefit families, farms, the environment, and the American economy.

The rule also allows us to begin consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill provides for general debate and makes in order 88 amendments, including 41 minority amendments and 20 bipartisan amendments. Another rule is expected tomorrow to provide for consideration of additional amendments.

This open process actually started in the Armed Services Committee on which I serve. At the committee level, 275 amendments were offered, and 231 amendments were adopted during our committee markup last month.

I have said this many times on this floor, but it is worth saying again: there is no greater responsibility of the Federal Government than to provide for the safety and security of the American people. This year's NDAA does just that by reforming, repairing, and rebuilding the United States military.

The bill addresses the realities of the dangerous threat environment facing our Nation and ensures our troops and their families have the necessary resources and benefits.

Over the last decade, we have cut our military at an alarming rate. As the threats rack up, we have planes that can't fly, ships that can't sail, and soldiers who can't deploy. We must reverse this readiness crisis.

Thankfully, there is bipartisan support for boosting our Nation's military. In fact, this bill passed out of the Armed Services Committee by a vote of 60-1, continuing a strong bipartisan tradition of passing NDAAs.

I want to briefly highlight just a few of the positive provisions of this legislation.

The bill increases total military spending by 10 percent to rebuild the military from the current readiness crisis. This includes increasing the size of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Army Guard and Reserve, Naval and Air Reserve, and Air Guard.

Given the serious threat posed by North Korea, the bill boosts missile defense programs, including adding an additional $2.5 billion above the President's budget request.

The bill also authorizes the construction of 13 new Navy ships, including three more littoral combat ships, as we work to grow toward a 355-ship fleet. It funds a 2.4 percent pay raise for our troops and extends special pay and bonuses for servicemembers.

Importantly, the bill continues to advance Chairman Thornberry's priority of reforming and strengthening the military's acquisition process to make it more effective and efficient.

Given the evolving threats related to cyber, the bill improves the oversight of cyber operations.

The bill also helps set policy for the U.S. military relating to Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Russia, Africa, and the Asian Pacific region.

All told, this bill achieves important priorities of reforming, repairing, and rebuilding our military.

Each and every day, more than 2 million men and women put on the uniform of the United States and serve our country. As we have seen by two recent tragedies, the Marine plane crash in Mississippi and the USS Fitzgerald collision off the coast of Japan, these individuals put their lives on the line in order to protect the freedoms we all hold dear. They deserve the resources necessary to fulfill their mission and the benefits worthy of those who sacrifice so much.

So I am hopeful we can continue to move forward in a bipartisan manner to pass this NDAA, to support our troops, and to fulfill our constitutional obligation to provide for the common defense.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support House Resolution 431 and the underlying bills, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman referred to what this would do to the budget. I would point out to the gentleman, and I think I did this in committee yesterday, that if this is passed, it will only be 16.8 percent of total Federal outlays, which means the single most important thing that we do here in government only gets less than 20 percent of the money that we are going to spend. So I don't think it is asking too much of ourselves, as the people responsible for providing for the defense of America, that we spend 16.8 percent of all the Federal money we are going to spend next year on making the American people safe and secure.

He spoke about tradeoffs. Let me tell you one tradeoff I don't think any of us should be willing to make, and that is trading off the safety and security of the American people for trying to keep some other overspending in some other part of the budget going.

We need to focus today, and in this bill, on what it takes to authorize the defense and the safety and security of the American people, and I believe this bill does that, as did all but one of my colleagues on the House Armed Services Committee.

So I believe that we have struck the appropriate balance here that does all that. Yes, we have got some budget things we need to take care of. That is for later. For today, we are going to focus on defending the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Austin

Scott), my colleague on the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Arizona.

This was not done in the middle of the night in secrecy. This was done in full committee with cameras watching us, and done early in the evening with full debate, so I disagree with him about that.

Let's talk about the wall for a second.

I support President Trump and what he is trying to do with the wall. I hope we get to a point where we can deal with that.

This is a defense authorization bill. This is not a wall authorization bill. The wall is already authorized. We don't need an authorization bill for the wall. It is already there. The next step for us to take for the wall is an appropriations bill, and this is not an appropriations bill.

So what the Rules Committee has done is made it clear that we are not going to deal with the wall one way or the other in the National Defense Authorization Act. That is not the proper place for it. That is not the proper place to be spending money for it. There is another part of our budget, another law for us to deal with there.

So I hope that we all will understand that what we have done is made it clear there is nothing in this bill--nothing--about a wall, nor should there be anything in this bill about a wall, because that is for another committee, another bill, another time, and another place.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Cheney), our newest member of the Armed Services Committee and the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate the gentlewoman's comments and concerns about protecting all of our privacy on the internet. I think we all should be about that. But instead of having a misguided and unauthorized regulatory action that left vast gaps in this system, we should have a comprehensive bill to deal with it. That bill is not before the House today.

What is before the House today in this rule are two bills: one that deals with the drought in the West, which is very important; and the second is provide for the safety and security of the American people. So that is what we are here today about.

I appreciate her concerns about that. I join with her, and I hope that we have a bill on this floor that comprehensively deals with the issues that she brought up, but now is not the time, these are not the bills, and this is not the rule to deal with it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I strongly agree with my colleague from Vermont's remarks regarding the Budget Control Act. It was passed for a good intention, but it has worked out quite differently from what people thought it was going to accomplish.

It is time for us to take responsibility, as the gentleman from Vermont said, and to do what we are supposed to do to make the priority decisions about what is important for America and what is not. Providing for the safety and security of the people of America, that is important. And if we have to make cuts in other parts of our budget to make sure we are doing that, first and foremost, I am happy to do it.

The gentleman is absolutely right about micromanagement. We have been micromanaging the people that we charge with defending America with how they are going to carry out combat responsibilities, particularly in the Middle East. President Trump, I think, quite rightly, has delegated many of those decisions down to Secretary Mattis so that our combatant commanders can make the decisions they have got to make as and when they need to make them.

I understand what he is saying about the State Department budget, something that we all should be concerned about. The appropriate time to talk about that is when the appropriations bill for the State Department is here, not when we are talking about the National Defense Authorization Act.

Finally, with regard to Afghanistan, which if I may make a little bit broader and talk about the Middle East in general, it is time for a new AUMF. The AUMFs that were passed in this Congress over 15 years ago were for a different time, with different circumstances altogether. And I do sense

a bipartisan urging for us to do that, but this is not the right time for us to do it on this particular piece of legislation.

I hope that at a future time the Foreign Affairs Committee, that has appropriate jurisdiction over that issue, will come forward with an AUMF that we can all discuss because we are now not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are in Syria, we are in Yemen, we are in Libya, we are in Somalia, where we have had some past history that is not so good.

We all--everybody, not just from the Armed Services Committee--need to understand these threats to our country and what we are going to do about them, have a strategy with a clear endgame, which we need and we haven't had for the last several years.

Then we should authorize it because only Congress has the power to declare war. We should authorize it. And by authorizing it, we not only take responsibility, but we communicate to our friends and our foes alike, and to those servicemen and -women who put themselves at risk out there that we are behind it. We, as the Representatives of the American people, are behind it. So I hope that we can do that, but it won't be in this particular bill.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's remarks, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

If I may make sure that we are all clear about where we are on the START; the START runs through 2021. That is 4 years from now. What the bill says is that if we find that Russia is in violation of the INF Treaty--and there is some indication that that is true--that we wouldn't extend it beyond 2021. But that is 4 years from now.

So what does that mean?

This is a shot across the bow to Russia. We are telling Russia: If you continue to violate the INF Treaty, we are not going to extend with you on START.

This is telling them: We are not going to let you get away with this.

And I would think, at this point, after all that we have heard, we would want to stand up to Russia, and this is a very vital way to do that.

Secondly, about the GTMO issue that he brought up, there are two amendments made in order by this rule for us to discuss GTMO, and I believe we are going to have that debate tonight. Now, I don't agree with the amendments, but we made them in order so we can have that debate on this floor.

So we are going to debate GTMO. My prediction is that we are going to defeat both of those amendments, but the people on the other side of the aisle have been given a great opportunity to make their argument that we shouldn't do that.

Nukes. Why are we trying to modernize our nuclear force?

Because our adversaries are modernizing theirs, and if we don't, we are not doing the proper thing to protect the people of the United States.

And then the gentleman talks about the budget bills. Now, there is a budget bill coming. Now, the budget bill is for the next fiscal year, October 1, 2017. That is several weeks from now. We have got time to pass a budget for next fiscal year.

But the way we have everything set up here, we try to move these defense bills about this time of year so that we can do what we have got to do to make sure we have communicated to the military what they are going to have to do their jobs.

If I may walk briefly around the world to remind us about where we are. Kim Jong-un has continued to test missiles throughout last year and this year, and he is getting better. And what he seeks is not just to strike South Korea or Japan, he wants to strike America. That is why you have an ICBM if you are in North Korea.

We need to step up to the plate and do more in missile defense and more in other things to make sure we are doing everything we can to protect America from an attack from North Korea.

China wants to take control of the South China Sea and the East China Sea. What does that mean to us for America?

Forty percent of the trade in the world moves through those two oceans. The greatest population center in the world is right there. It is where we want to do more business, where people there want to do more business with us; and not having a robust military presence there means we cede that part of the world to China.

I guess we could pull back to where we were on December 6, 1941, when we didn't have a presence in Guam and Japan and South Korea and Singapore. Or we could take the understanding from what happened that terrible day on December 7, 1941, that we have to be thinking now for the challenge to us then and, by making those preparations and making sure we have the defense in place, we keep December 7, 1941, from happening again.

Then we have our good friends in Russia, as they push not only into Eastern Europe, but now into the Middle East. It used to be we thought that Russia was kind of off the table; you know, the Soviet Union collapsed; didn't have to worry about Russia anymore.

Russia is back. They are back in many different military ways, in their navy, in their missiles, and what they are doing with their armed forces, including the little green men in Ukraine. We need to take that threat seriously, as we haven't had to take it for years.

And then there is the Middle East. We know what is happening today in Mosul and in Raqqa. Perhaps ISIS is being pushed out of those places, but it is not disappearing. It is not going away as a threat, any more than al-Qaida has gone away as a threat. We still have terrorist groups like them and others who seek to do harm to the American people, whether it is over there or over here, and we have to provide for the defense against that.

Then there is Iran; Iran that, because of an ill-considered agreement reached with them by the Obama administration, now is on a path to get an ICBM of its own, which it doesn't need to strike Israel. It needs an ICBM to strike us.

Then they get as close as they want to under that agreement that we reached with them. Right up to the edge of violation, where they perfect their nuclear technology, they decide in a short period of time to violate it, put a nuclear weapon on one of those ICBMs and threaten us directly.

That and a host of other threats are what we are talking about in this bill. We have never faced such a complex set of threats since the end of World War II. It is not my word. It is the word of countless experts who have come before our committee.

We have to do this. The American people expect us to do this. Like many other people in this body, I do tele-townhalls. At my last two tele-townhalls, I have asked this open-ended question: What is the most important issue to you?

We give them a broad range of issues to pick from: healthcare, tax reform, you name it. The number one issue in those two tele-townhalls, by far, for the people in my district was national security. They see what is happening in North Korea. They see what is happening in the Middle East. They know what Russia is up to. They are worried about China, and they want to know what we are doing.

This bill that this rule provides for does what we need to do to protect the American people. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate everything that I have heard today from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle because I know people on both sides of the aisle care a great deal about these issues.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support House Resolution 431 and the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.

I thank the chairman, first of all, for his hard work on this bill, and all the members of the committee and the staff. As the chairman has pointed out, this is a bill that we have passed for 55 straight years. It is a long and complicated bill that essentially sets the defense and national security policy for our country, and there is a lot of good work that has gone into this bill.

Again, I thank the members for doing that. They recognize the complex threat environment that the chairman correctly described, and we are attempting to address it as best we can in this very difficult environment.

I think the thing that is most difficult that I really want to emphasize is what the chairman said in the middle of his remarks: that over the past 6 years we have had one government shutdown, a number of continuing resolutions, several threatened government shutdowns, and the unpredictability that that has presented to the Defense Department.

Now, to be clear, it has also presented a fair amount--the same amount of unpredictability to the nondefense discretionary budget that also has to deal with those challenges. But that uncertainty about our budget has made it very difficult to plan, and nowhere is that more important than at the Department of Defense.

As they try to lay out a strategy for national security, not knowing from one month to the next how much money you are going to have or what you are going to be able to spend it on is a huge problem. I will say a little bit more about this later, because as big a problem as that is, we haven't solved it.

As we debate this bill here today, we do not have a budget resolution from either the House or the Senate. This is a problem we still need to work on. However much money we wind up spending on defense, if we had a cohesive plan and a clear idea of how much money we were going to have over the next few years, it would be a lot easier to plan for those contingencies.

Again, I do want to compliment the work that has been done on this bill. Particularly, I focus a lot on unconventional threats. I think that is the changing nature of the world. I used to chair what is now called the Emerging Threats Committee. I want to thank Congresswoman Stefanik and Ranking Member Langevin for their work and focusing on cyber, focusing on supporting our special operation forces that have borne so much of the brunt of the fight that we face in countering terrorism.

I also want to thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Cooper for their work on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, focusing on space, in particular, on the importance of emphasizing that. For a long time, our country dominated space. We didn't have to worry about it. But now a lot of other countries are catching up and competing with us. I think this bill reflects the importance of that.

So there are a lot of very solid things in this bill, but I want to close by emphasizing two significant problems that we still need to address.

One I mentioned already. We don't have a budget resolution. This bill has $621 billion in it, as I understand it, in the base bill, and another, I believe, $75 billion in the overseas contingency fund. We are spending nearly $700 billion in this bill on defense. That is a lot of money, and the chairman mentioned a lot of the very necessary programs that it is going towards. However, that breaks the budget caps.

In order to break the budget caps, the House and the Senate have to vote to break the budget caps. It is July. We haven't done that. I will emphasize that in the Senate it actually requires 60 votes to break the budget caps.

So as much as I see the need in defense, given the complex threat environment out there, it is very possible that $72 billion of what is in this bill is going to disappear between now and the end of this year unless we address the broader issue of sequestration and budget caps.

I will also emphasize that addressing that issue by gutting funding for the nondefense discretionary budget and plussing up defense is not going to work for a couple of reasons.

Number one, a lot of the national security needs that we have come out of some of those other items. The proposal to cut the State Department by 31 percent in a time when we face the complex threat environment that was described is ridiculous. In fact, I will quote Chairman Mattis as well, who said:

If you are going to cut the State Department by 30 percent,

you better give me five more divisions because I am going to

need them. We are not going to be able to resolve conflicts

in a peaceful way.

And also, of course, we have domestic needs that are very important as well. We are still waiting on the infrastructure package from the administration.

There are a lot of needs that are not being met, and we are not yet voting to bust the budget caps. Here we have a bill that does that, but this House has to step up and take that vote if this defense authorizing bill is going to go forward.

The second and final point, we still don't have a national security strategy from the White House. Now, we have a very complex threat environment, as I have said more often than I meant to during the course of the last few minutes--we do. We have got Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, a variety of terrorist threats. What we have heard in our committee for the last 6 months is a series of people from the Pentagon coming over and saying the house is on fire. We don't have enough money to do--fill in the blank. There are a whole lot of different things.

What we haven't heard is a strategy, and the most disturbing conversation I had in that regard was with someone from the Office of Net Assessment.

I yield myself an additional 1 minute.

He explained to me that we laid out a strategy in 2012 and said we do not have the money to fund that strategy right now. So I asked him: Well, how short are you? How much more money do you need?

He looked at me like he didn't understand what I was asking, so I sort of explained it. The short answer: he didn't know.

How could he not know? I mean, if you can sit there confidently and say, ``My gosh, we don't have enough money; we are way crazy short of our 2012 strategy'' and you still can't say how short, then you don't have a strategy. We need a strategy to make sure this money is spent wisely.

I will close with a compliment of the chairman for something that he has done. We should also not assume that simply spending more money at the Department of Defense is necessarily going to make us safer. We have to make sure we spend it efficiently and effectively. I think this bill has a lot of very solid efforts to try to make us do that, towards acquisition reform, towards spending the money more wisely.

It is not just a matter of spending more money. We have got to spend it smarter, and we have got to confront the lack of a strategy, and we have got to confront the fact that we still have not resolved our budget resolution problem.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Tsongas), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Readiness.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

(Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel.

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Brown).

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time remains on each side.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney) who is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, what I really want to focus on is the budget problem, because that is really underlying all of this.

We have heard a lot of good speeches from Members talking about what is in this bill, how important it is, how what is in this bill is attempting both to meet our national security threats and, as importantly, to make sure that we take care of the men and women who serve our military, who fight to protect us to make sure, first of all, that they and their families are taken care of from a financial standpoint, but also to make sure they have the equipment and training they need to be ready to fight the fights that we ask them to go to. I think that is one of the great challenges.

Whatever it is we decide ought to be our national security strategy, I think the thing we all agree on is we need to make sure we provide the training, equipment, and support so that the men and women who serve in the military are ready for that fight.

The worst thing we can do is create a hollow force and set up an expectation that: You need to do all of this, but we are only going to train you for that. So if this other stuff comes up, you are not going to be ready.

We have talked about this a lot in our committee to make sure that we are ready for the fight that comes. And that is where the budget creates a very significant problem.

We have talked a lot about the Budget Control Act and sequestration. It is pretty clear why we had the Budget Control Act and sequestration. I was here for it. We were days away from not raising the debt ceiling and basically not meeting our commitments to pay our bills. There are those who figure that that can be a significant problem.

So we made an agreement. We were going to try to get the budget under control. Sequestration was put in place, with the expectation that it wouldn't be implemented because we would come to a grand bargain on revenue and spending that would get our deficit under control. Well, we didn't, and sequestration kicked in.

But as we sit here today, even if we got rid of sequestration, even if we got rid of the budget caps, we are still $20 trillion in debt. We are going to run a $700 billion deficit. This is projected to go nowhere but up in the years ahead. I don't believe that is sustainable.

Now, I don't think we need to balance the budget tomorrow or next year or even in the next 5 years, but we need to get ourselves on a sustainable path. And we flat refuse to do that.

You don't see a lot of campaigns promising to cut specific programs or promising to raise taxes. I love the fact that if you poll the American people, there is a very clear consensus on what they think we ought to do about this problem.

First of all, somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 percent of them support a balanced budget now, by the way. Not 5, 10 years, but right now.

You ask them: Well, here are all the places where the government spends money. What would you like to cut?

The answer to that question is: nothing. Literally nothing.

The Pew Research folks do a poll on this every year, and in every single category a majority of people would rather keep the money the same or increase it, as opposed to decrease it.

Of course, if you ask them what taxes they would like to increase, by and large, they don't want to increase taxes. It is interesting. If you can convince people that the taxes in question will not apply to them, for a brief moment they will be supportive of it. But then someone will come along and convince them that at some point it might apply to them, and then they oppose it.

So our task as Members of Congress is to balance the budget without raising taxes or cutting spending. That, of course, is impossible. So what we have chosen to do is put off that decision for as long as is humanly possible.

That is why we do not have a budget resolution. Any budget resolution this body could create would fail on probably multiple fronts of what the public expects. It wouldn't balance the budget. It would cut spending they didn't want to cut. It probably wouldn't raise taxes, coming from this majority, but if it did, it wouldn't be popular. So we have to start having an honest conversation about the budget.

We hear in the Armed Services Committee all the time about all the needs, all the shortfalls, all the critical things we need to do. We argue about it and argue about it, but in 6 years the Republican majority has not put forward a plan to control mandatory spending. They say that is the problem. No plan to do that. Certainly, they haven't even considered the possibility of increasing revenue.

If we are this serious--and we should be--about making sure that we have the funds necessary to provide an adequate national security, then we should stop cowering from the budget debate.

Personally, I am all for raising taxes because I see the needs that the chairman and everybody else has described, and I am actually prepared to pay for them. So we need to do that. That overarching budget problem is what has put us in this mess.

As we talk about this bill, as I said, it is $72 billion over the budget caps. Unless we get a vote to lift those budget caps--which I just mentioned is politically unpopular, which is why we haven't done it for the full 6 months we have been in session this year--then that $72 billion goes away and the Pentagon is back in chaos.

So this may be a good bill. It may be solid. It doesn't have the backing of the budget.

Let me finally suggest that there are some things that the Department of Defense could do. This is why the strategy is so important.

Yes, the Obama administration waited until May of 2010. They didn't have 6 years of CRs and government shutdowns and threatened shutdowns and the changing threat environment that we have. They had a reasonably consistent set of problems. It was a set of problems, but they had the same Secretary of Defense from the previous administration. They had time to look at that.

We need this strategy urgently because the big question is: Are we spending the money correctly? Is the Department of Defense spending the money in the right way? Do we have a strategy to figure out how we should prioritize?

We don't. With this crushing budget environment, it is absolutely critical that we do. We need to consider the possibility, for instance, that we might be spending some money that we shouldn't be spending.

I will often ask that question of the generals who come over and tell us how short they are of everything. I say: Well, where are we spending money, in your opinion, that we shouldn't be?

They never answer the question. You cannot tell me in a $700 billion budget in a place as large as the Pentagon that there isn't somebody over there who knows to say: Look, we shouldn't be doing this.

Just to give one suggestion, we have had the BRAC debate forever. We have had a shrinking military, yet we have maintained the same infrastructure. We have seen study after study from the Air Force and others about how much excess capacity they have and money that could be saved from doing that. But again this year, for, I submit, political reasons, BRAC is prohibited.

So we need to get a lot smarter about how we are going to spend this money and a lot smarter about our budget if this bill is actually going to become reality.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 23.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, in California, 5 years of historic drought caused billions of dollars of damage to our economy, destroyed tens of thousands of jobs, and brought many communities within just months of literally running out of water, all because we couldn't store water from the wet years to assure plenty in the drought years.

Then back to back with this historic drought, we have just had one of the wettest winters on record. Massive torrents of water threatened entire communities on its way to be wasted in the Pacific Ocean, all because of the very same problem: we have few reservoirs to store this superabundance of water for the next drought.

Even before the drought, massive water diversions required by a growing tangle of laws and regulations had created devastating economic hardship in California's fertile Central Valley. Those same policies forced us to release what precious little water we had remaining behind our dams to adjust river temperatures for fish.

For three Congresses now, the House has acted to fix this folly. Today, H.R. 23, the GROW Act, by Congressman David Valadao, addresses the policy, regulatory, and administrative failures that have mismanaged our water supplies across the West.

The GROW Act includes both short-term and long-term provisions aimed at restoring water reliability and certainty to cities and farms. It includes seven titles that expand water storage, improve infrastructure, protect water rights, and create more abundant and reliable water resources to benefit both communities and the environment.

The GROW Act gives Federal agencies the tools they need to help safeguard communities from the hardship of future droughts. It codifies the historic Bay-Delta accord that provided an equitable balance between human and environmental needs and guaranteed the reliability and predictability of our water supplies.

It strengthens northern California area-of-origin water rights and prevents the Federal Government from demanding that people give up their water rights in order to operate on Federal land.

It streamlines the endlessly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive environmental permitting that is blocking new reservoir construction by coordinating Federal agencies and requiring transparency of the science behind its decisions.

It requires completion of studies for five new reservoirs that have dragged on for decades.

In the past, we have heard three objections from opponents. The first is it will decimate salmon fisheries. On the contrary, it saves those fisheries where the environmental policies of the past 40 years have utterly failed to protect them.

The GROW Act targets the nonnative predators that are responsible for 90 percent of salmon losses as the smolts try to make their way to the ocean. It encourages the use of fish hatcheries to assure that salmon populations will increase dramatically in future years.

The second objection is that it will preempt State water rights laws. Read section 302 of the bill. ``The Secretary of the Interior is directed, in operation of the Central Valley Project, to adhere to California's water rights laws governing water rights priorities . . .''

It goes on to say that diversions ``shall not be undertaken in a manner that alters the water rights priorities established by California law.''

It does have provisions necessary to codify the Bay-Delta agreement and combat invasive predators, but this doesn't set a precedent for other States. California is unique among the States in the fact that it operates with a coordinated operating agreement that combines the Federal Central Valley Project and the California State water projects and runs them as a unified system. This was at the request of California and with its consent.

The third objection is that it rewards powerful agricultural interests at the expense of consumers. This is nonsense. An average consumer uses roughly 100 gallons a day to wash the dishes, water the lawn, everything else we do in our daily lives. But when you purchase a cheeseburger, you have just consumed 750 gallons of water because that is what it takes to grow the ingredients in that cheeseburger. Buy a pair of jeans, you have just used 1,800 gallons of water.

The fact is that all of this water benefits consumers and the tens of thousands of farm workers and others who provide for their families from this water.

Droughts are nature's fault. Water shortages are our fault. They are a choice we made a generation ago when we chose to neglect our infrastructure and mismanage our water resources. It has led to increasingly severe water shortages, spiraling utility and grocery bills, and economic stagnation. The GROW Act chooses a brighter future of abundance and prosperity that can begin today with our vote.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes), who has been a leader on this issue for more than two decades.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao), the author of this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the dean of the Republican delegation to the House.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar), the chairman of the bipartisan Western Caucus.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Bakersfield, California (Mr. McCarthy), the majority leader.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Mimi Walters).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Knight).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I think it is time to fact check the fact checker.

The last major reservoir of over a million acre feet was in 1979. It was in New Melones, 2.3 million acre feet. The two reservoirs that the gentleman referenced combined are less than a million acre feet. They would fill New Melones to less than half of that amount.

With respect to water salinity, the Bay-Delta Accord, that is codified by this bill, guarantees the water necessary to combat salt water intrusion.

And finally, I would point out that, no, dams don't create water. Nature creates water. Dams store that water from wet years so that we have plenty of it in dry years. That is where we have fallen a generation behind in our needs precisely because of the laws that the gentleman from California doggedly defends.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Abundance or shortage, that is the question. And I want to thank and salute Mr. Valadao for his work on this issue and for putting that choice so clearly before the House today.

It is true, we can choose to continue down this sad road that we have been on. That means increasingly severe government-induced shortages. It means higher and higher water and grocery prices and a permanently declining quality of life for our children who will be required to stretch and ration every drop of water in their bleak and parched homes.

With this bill, we choose a different future. We choose abundance. We choose a future in which water flows again to the fertile fields of the Central Valley, providing full employment for families and affordable groceries from America's agricultural cornucopia. It is a future in which families need not watch their gardens shrivel and die, and towns and cities need not fear mandatory water rationing and uncertain and unpredictable supplies.

It is a future in which long-established water rights are safe and secure from the whims of politicians and bureaucrats. We choose a future in which thriving populations of young salmon can swim to the sea unmolested by the non-native predators that now kill 90 percent of them before they reach the ocean; a future in which new fish hatcheries assure the release of millions of additional salmon to supply a revived and rapidly expanding commercial fishing industry.

We choose a future in which great new reservoirs can store vast amounts of water in wet years to assure abundance in dry ones; a future in which families can enjoy the prosperity that abundant water and hydroelectricity and affordable groceries provide, and the quality of life that comes from that prosperity. Abundance or shortage? That is the question. We choose abundance.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I just want to say that this is a very good amendment. The committee supports it, and it is essential to providing the flexibility that is necessary.

I might point out to my colleague from California, when we originally developed this bill more than 5 years ago, we consulted more than 60 water agencies throughout northern and central California, including many in Democratic congressional districts. Senior water rights are essential to northern California. This bill strengthens them, and Mr. LaMalfa's amendment adds the management flexibility that is long overdue.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I have no objection to this amendment. I thank the gentleman from Fresno, California, for his constructive contribution to this process.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment adds a superfluous provision that requires a study on a subject that we have already studied to death.

We find the left constantly proposing these technologies to manage our existing water shortage often as an excuse not to expand our ability to store new water supplies.

The problem is not complicated. These recycling projects are typically four times as expensive as traditional water storage, according to a 2016 study by the California Public Utilities Commission.

If we had exhausted our existing resources, then these technologies might make sense if the alternative is no water at all. But that is not the alternative. The alternative is to develop our resources at about one-fourth the cost of these technologies the gentleman is trying to sell us--four times the cost.

No consumer in his right mind would pay four times more for the same product. Only politicians would do that, and the problem is when politicians make this choice, consumers end up paying.

Which brings me to my second objection to the gentleman's amendment. Our traditional water projects are paid for by the users of the water in proportion to their use, as is the beneficiary pays principle that has guided our water projects for generations.

These policies protect taxpayers from footing the bill for somebody else's water.

The title 16 recycling projects the gentleman is promoting are not paid for by the water users but rather by general taxpayers, meaning these projects literally rob St. Petersburg to pay St. Paul.

If the gentleman would like to confine the provisions of the bill to require his constituents to pay four times more for their water or that his constituents pay to subsidize the water for my constituents, I would be happy to support him. But I sincerely doubt that is what he has in mind.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would simply cite to my friend the California Public Utilities Commission report in 2016, and what would be the cost of future sources of water for California. They say very clearly that recycling water is nearly four times as costly as traditional sources of water, and that is being generous.

I support any water project that pencils out. This one does not. This one would require water bills to quadruple. For California, it is exactly policies like these that are driving water bills up. The people of California need to take note of that and to realize the choices they make at the ballot box have real world implications to the bills they are paying for simple things like water and power.

Mr. Chair, I ask for a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I object.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, my friends' concerns are well placed; his amendment is completely misplaced.

The fact is that, for 45 years, our environmental laws have made the management of our forests virtually impossible. After 45 years of experience with these laws, imposed with the explicit promise they would improve our forest environment, I think we are entitled to ask: How is our forest environment doing? And the answer is damning; our forests are dying.

Timber harvests of surplus timber have fallen 80 percent in those years. The result is severe overcrowding in our forests. An acre normally supports between 20 to 100 trees, depending upon the topography; but because of these laws, average density in the Sierra has now ballooned to 266 trees per acre.

In this crowded condition, these trees fight for their lives against other trees trying to occupy the same ground. And in this crowded and stressed condition, they fall victim to disease, pestilence, drought, and, ultimately, catastrophic wildfire.

The answer is not this amendment that seeks to derail this needed water storage; it is to restore scientific management to our forests to restore them to a healthy condition.

When I visited the command center of the Rim Fire several years ago that threatened Yosemite Valley, I asked the firefighters: What answer can I take, in your name, back to Congress? And the answer was: Treatment matters. We need proper forest management.

The good news for my friend from Santa Barbara is he will soon have the opportunity to vote on just such a bill, the Resilient Federal Forest Act, by Mr. Westerman of Arkansas. It treats this problem comprehensively. It passed the House Natural Resources Committee. We hope to bring it soon to the floor of the House. It will address the problems that plague our forests by restoring proper scientific management to our public lands.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.